


Darning

by Enchantable



Series: Silver Lining [3]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Leather Jackets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-17
Updated: 2013-08-17
Packaged: 2017-12-23 20:39:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/930871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enchantable/pseuds/Enchantable
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bonus AU<br/>Raleigh buries his first pilot jacket</p>
            </blockquote>





	Darning

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Most Jaeger pilots have jackets marked by their Jaeger's name and killcount. Not Raleigh though, he buried his and his brother's in an empty coffin.

He buries their jackets in Yancy’s empty coffin. 

There needs to be something there and the jacket still smells like him. It’s the closest thing he’s got to a body so he puts it in and tosses his own with it. It feels like he’s dead anyway. No, not dead. It feels like he’s dying over and over again, like the Kaiju’s ripping him away and he’s screaming even if no-one can hear. It’s a long, painful sound that comes again and again until it just stops. 

Raleigh doesn’t know if he wants it to stop or if he wants it to keep going, just so he knows he’s alive. 

He holds himself in that scream, feels the terror and agony rip away all that glorious death bullshit he’s been fed. Most of all he listens to the last thought that echoed in his head. Where’s Raleigh? He has to swallow back bile because he isn’t sure if his brother was wondering if he was safe or next or just why he wasn’t there. The emotions are a tangled, overwhelming knot that Raleigh doesn’t think he wants to untangle. It’s another cowardice but he’s used to those. 

So he goes off and he builds a wall that his brother laughed at. Marshall Pentecost called it a monument to flight. Raleigh knows he’s trying to run away because he may be a coward and he may be afraid but he isn’t that stupid. He takes the dangerous jobs and hopes that maybe he’ll fall. He misses his brother, their Jaeger and those stupid matching jackets. Mostly he misses being a part of a team. But it’s every man for himself on the wall. 

Then the world comes very close to ending, he gets recruited and a petite woman with blue in her hair and fire in her eyes turns his world upside down. He’s been told he’s too traumatized, too fucked up to have another person in his head. Until he meets someone who rivals him. And for the first time he relieves moments other than the one where his brother died. 

That’s the thing about having someone in your head. They’re everywhere. The drift is silence, but that’s mostly because you’re so damn confused you can’t remember how to scream. Until you’re out of it. Then everything comes rushing in. They stare down each other’s blackness, the gaping holes and the terrifying moments and somehow it’s alright. Somehow facing another’s darkness is easier. 

She pulls apart the tangles of emotion he feels when he thinks about his brother. And when she sees the pictures of him she smiles like he’s an old friend. He revels in what being powerless and being saved feels like. When his hands close over the red shoe with it’s perfect gold buckles, his emotions echo hers. 

They save the world and come back heroes and Raleigh remembers there’s good out there. Remembers what his brother used to say, that even if it didn’t seem like it you could survive everything until the last thing. And when Herc hands them a pair of jackets as black as their drift suits and edged in the blue of Mako’s hair and the orange of Gipsy’s core, he pulls it on without a second thought. 

It fits perfectly.


End file.
